


Blackbird

by TigerMoon



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Lullabies, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:45:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4708118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerMoon/pseuds/TigerMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shinigami doesn't know how to sing with love.</p>
<p>Written for Soul Eater Angst Week on tumblr. Day 3 prompt: "Haunting Melody"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackbird

They called it singing, back in the dark times, when the soldiers would come for him under the protection of the moonlight. “Sing for us,” they would demand, with fetid breath and leering faces, and beneath their rough embraces the nameless child sang, a claret voice they could not extinguish. A song that fell on the deaf ears of the stars, a song the boy who would become Death was first taught by a god in a fanged mask, a creature he had once dared call father and was savaged for the daring.

He sang the loss of innocence every night, and that melody was his lullaby.

Asura had his own lullabies as well. Shinigami never sang to him, never taught him; the kishin's creator was mute. Asura made his own melodies. His songs, though, were crafted from the screams of his victims as he carved their souls from their bodies, as he laughed and screamed and sang the song of Madness to the ever-cackling moon high up in the sky. Mania and fear crooned him to sleep.

Now, centuries later, Shinigami cradles a tiny crying bundle in his arms and parts his lips, but nothing comes out. Spirit had told him, earlier that day, that babies needed lullabies to sleep to. That songs soothed the heart and soul. That children needed to hear the sound of their parent's love.

The Reaper has never heard that sound before. He has never been sung to, never been touched with kindness. He knows human songs, has heard them before, but has never dared to try and sing them. Lullabies seem too pure, too gentle, for him to taint with his soul, so heavy with memory and bitterness. Only humans sing for joy and pleasure – the songs he learned in childhood are ones he never wants his infant child to learn.

Shinigami doesn't know how to sing with love.

To be honest, he's afraid to try.

But Kid is so tiny, so innocent, and when he wails something breaks inside the elder shinigami, his chest constricts and he draws in a deep breath.

“... black... blackbird singing in t-the dead of... night....”

Kid's little golden eyes go wide at the stuttering, rough sound.

“Take th- these... these broken wings and learn to fly....”

The wails go silent, Kid finding a chubby little fist to gum on as he listens to the stilted, hesitant lullaby. There is something so trusting, so innocent in the way his son looks, cradled in his hands, that Shinigami finds himself overwhelmed with the need to protect, with pride and the desire to laugh and cry, the feeling that this tiny creature holds his life in his tiny little fingers....

For the first time, Shinigami sings with love.

“All your life... you were only waiting for this moment to arise....”

 

 


End file.
